Summary
In the mid-1920s, a peculiar fever swept through the salons of Paris: the crossword puzzle. Mots croisés uses this seemingly trivial obsession as the catalyst for a sophisticated domestic comedy of errors. The narrative follows a group of socialites, including the charismatic Henri Debain and the expressive Marfa d'Hervilly, whose lives become increasingly entangled in the black-and-white grids of the morning paper. What begins as a harmless intellectual pastime quickly devolves into a series of romantic misunderstandings and social faux pas. As the characters prioritize 'horizontal' and 'vertical' clues over their actual relationships, the film peels back the layers of French high-society artifice. It is a story about the search for the right words in a world where communication is failing, told through the lens of a fad that threatened to consume the leisure class. The puzzle is not just a game; it is a metaphor for the complex, intersecting lives of the Parisian elite, where one wrong letter can ruin an entire reputation.
